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Updated: June 28, 2025
"And when the MacGregors come down the glen, and ye see toom faulds, a bluidy hearthstone, and the fire flashing out between the rafters o' your house, ye may be thinking then, Ewan, that were your friend Rob to the fore, you would have had that safe which it will make your heart sair to lose." Ewan of Brigglands again shrugged and groaned, but remained silent.
It was while we were thus huddled together on the bank that I heard Rob Roy whisper to the man behind whom he was placed on horseback, "Your father, Ewan, wadna hae carried an auld friend to the shambles, like a calf, for a' the Dukes in Christendom." Ewan returned no answer, but shrugged, as one who would express by that sign that what he was doing was none of his own choice.
The "Memoirs of the Life of Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel" were printed for the Abbotsford Club in 1842. They are believed to have been written between 1730 and 1740 by John Drummond of Bahaldy, a grandson, or great-grandson, of Lochiel. Several copies of the manuscript are in existence, of which the best is said by the editor to be the one then in the possession of Mr. Crawfurd of Cartsburn.
But that which occasioned the greatest vexation to Sir Ewan, was an opportunity which he conceived that the tutors or guardians of the young Maclean had lost the power of emancipating their ward from the clutches of Argyle's power.
When it was whispered about, therefore, that I was in possession of a magic stone which had the power of protecting me from the dangers of the deep, the credulous people readily grasped at the explanation of supernatural assistance, and thenceforth I was distinguished amongst them as one over whom Providence had cast a miraculous garment to protect me, as Earl Ewan was protected in the olden time.
Having surveyed the boat and predicted calamity, he departed, leaving a circle of quaint and youthful figures around the Petrel in the shed: Gene Hollister, romantically inclined, yet somewhat hampered by a strict parental supervision; Ralph's cousin Ham Durrett, who was even then a rather fat boy, good-natured but selfish; Don and Harry Ewan, my second cousins; Mac and Nancy Willett and Sam and Sophy McAlery.
One afternoon I returned from school to pause at the head of the stairs. Cousin Bertha Ewan and Mrs. McAlery were discussing with my mother an affair that I judged from the awed tone in which they spoke might prove interesting. "Poor Grace," Mrs. McAlery was saying, "I imagine she's paid a heavy penalty. No man alive will be faithful under those circumstances."
My friend Ewan told me, among other things, when he came back from San Juan Hill, that not all the carnage of battle turned his bowels as the sight of slant black wings rising flockwise before the burial squad. There are three kinds of noises buzzards make, it is impossible to call them notes, raucous and elemental.
"I canna think what had put the revenue men on the track o' the smugglers," a fisherman was saying. "Surely if any man carried the game on secretly it was Harry Ewan." "What's to hinder them finding out?" said Jack Paterson. "Why, I ken'd it lang syne, though it isna ony business o' mine to ken."
The audience being at length satisfied, group after group departed to take their bed upon the heath, or in the neighbouring huts, some cursing the Duke and Garschattachin, some lamenting the probable danger of Ewan of Brigglands, incurred by his friendship to MacGregor, but all agreeing that the escape of Rob Roy himself lost nothing in comparison with the exploit of any one of their chiefs since the days of Dougal Ciar, the founder of his line.
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